A single video-camera and marker-based stroke rehabilitation system is a cost effective solution for emerging markets. With a TV set, post-stroke patients can do rehabilitation exercises by themselves according to the guidance on the screen prescribed by doctors/therapists.
WO2008/099301A1 discloses a feedback device for guiding and supervising physical exercises. Although it utilizes body-worn sensors or markers and a camera system to detect a body posture and/or body movement of the person, the feedback device can only detect the body posture as a whole and cannot accurately detect the angle change in a rotation exercise of, for example, hand and/or wrist.
Specifically, of all rehabilitation exercises, hand and/or wrist related rotation movements are important exercises for post-stroke patients. In the case of a hand-worn marker of arbitrary shape like an ellipsoid ball or a cube, it is difficult for a single camera-based system to track 3 degrees of freedom of hand rotation. In most cases, in order to complete this task, additional markers on the hand, or other modalities like accelerometers, have to be used to help to track rotation.